Shipulski On Design

Posts Tagged ‘Fear’

Our unhealthy fascination with ever-increasing shareholder value has officially gone too far.  In some companies dishonesty is now more culturally acceptable than missing the numbers. (Unless, of course, you get caught. Then, it’s time for apologies.)  The sacrosanct mission statement can’t save us.  Even the most noble can be stomped dead by the dirty boots of profitability.

Though, legally, companies can self-regulate, practically, they cannot.  There’s nothing to balance the one-sided, hedonistic pursuit of profitability.  What’s needed is a counterbalancing mechanism of equal and opposite force.  What’s needed is a new role that is missing from today’s org chart and does not have a name.

Ombudsman isn’t the right word, but part of it is right – the part that investigates.  But the tense is wrong – the ombudsman has after-the-fact responsibility.  The ombudsman gets to work after the bad deed is done.  And another weakness – ombudsman don’t have equal-and-opposite power of the C-suite profitability monsters. But most important, and what can be built on, is the independent nature of the ombudsman.

Maybe it’s a proactive ombudsman with authority on par with the Board of Directors.  And maybe their independence should be similar to a Supreme Court justice.  But that’s not enough.  This role requires hulk-like strength to smash through the organizational obfuscation fueled by incentive compensation and x-ray vision to see through the magical cloaking power of financial shenanigans.  But there’s more. The role requires a deep understanding of complex adaptive systems (people systems), technology, patents and regulatory compliance; the nose of an experienced bloodhound to sniff out the foul; and the jaws of a pit bull that clamp down and don’t let go.

Ombudsman is more wrong than right.  I think liability is better. Liability, as a word, has teeth.  It sounds like it could jeopardize profitability, which gives it importance.  And everyone knows liability is supposed to be avoided, so they’d expect the work to be proactive.  And since liability can mean just about anything, it could provide the much needed latitude to follow the scent wherever it takes.  Chief Liability Officer (CLO) has a nice ring to it.

[The Chief Do-The-Right-Thing Officer is probably the best name, but its acronym is too long.]

But the Chief Liability Officer (CLO) must be different than the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO), who has all the responsibility to do innovation with none of the authority to get it done.  The CLO must have a gavel as loud as the Chief Justice’s, but the CLO does not wear the glasses of a lawyer.  The CLO wears the saffron robes of morality and ethics.

Is Chief Liability Officer the right name?  I don’t know. Does the CLO report to the CEO or the Board of Directors?  Don’t know.  How does the CLO become a natural part of how we do business?  I don’t know that either.

But what I do know, it’s time to have those discussions.

Image credit – Dietmar Temps

Everyone is looking for that new thing, that differentiator, that edge.  The important filtering question is: Has it been done before?  If it has been done before it cannot be a new thing (that’s a rule), so it’s important to limit yourself to things that have not been done.  Sounds silly to say, but with today’s hectic pace sometimes that distinction is overlooked.

Once your eyeballs are calibrated, it pretty easy to see the vital yet-to-be-done work.  But calibration is definitely needed because things don’t look as they seem.  Here are a few examples to help you calibrate.

“It can’t be done.”   This really means is it was tried some time ago by someone who doesn’t work here anymore and we’ve forgotten why, but the one experiment that was run did not work.  This a good indication of fertile ground.   Someone a long time ago thought it was important enough to try and it still has not been done successfully.  And, new materials and manufacturing processes have been created and opened up new design space. Give it a try.

“That will never work.” See above.

“You can’t do that.”  This means you (and, likely your industry) have a policy that has blocks this new idea.  It may not be the best idea, but since policy prohibits it, you have the design space all to yourself if you want it.  (That is, of course, if you want to compete with no one.) Likely there are no physical constraints, just the emotional constraints you created with your policy.  It’s all yours, if you try it.

“No one will buy that.”  This means no one offers a product like that. It means your industry doesn’t understand it because you or your competitors don’t sell anything like it.  Though Marketing knows the inherent uncertainty, they don’t know the market potential.  But you know you’re onto something. Try it.

“That’s just a niche market.”  This means there’s a market that’s buying your product even though you’ve spent no time or energy to develop that market.  It’s an accidental market. It’s small because it’s young and because you (and your competition) haven’t invested in it nor have developed an unique new product for it.  The growth is all yours if you try.

Organizations create blocking mechanisms and tricky language to protect themselves from the new-and-different because the new-and-different are scary. But organizations desperately need new-and-different. And for that they desperately need to do things that haven’t been done.

The first step is to recognize the fertile design space and untilled markets your fear has created for you.

Image credit — Jordan Oram 

I used to believe others were responsible for my problem, now I believe I am responsible.  The turning point came when I was struggling with a stressful situation a friend gave me some simple advice.  He said “Look inside.”  For some reason, that was enough for me to start my transformation.

I used to compare myself to others.  It caused me great pain because I judged myself as inferior.  Over time I learned that others compared themselves to me and felt the same way.  Also, I learned that success brings problems of its own, namely worry and anxiety around losing what “success” has brought.  Though I still sometimes feel inferior, I’ve learned to recognize the symptoms, and once I call them by name, I can move forward.

I used to care too much about money.  Though I still care about money, I care more about time.

I used to wrestle with the past and worry about the future.  Now I sit in the present, and I like it better.   I still slip sometimes, but I catch myself pretty quickly.

I used to be largely unaware of my lack of awareness.  Now that I’ve learned to be more aware of it, I’m closer to the people I care about.  And I’m aware that I’m just getting started.

I used to want more of everything.  Now I have enough and I want to enjoy it.

I used to want to climb the corporate ladder, now I want to do amazing work.

I used to judge my younger self though my older self’s eyes.  That was unskillful.  I’ve realized that as a younger person my intensions were good, just as they are today.  And, I’ve learned that perfection is an unattainable goal and that sometimes I forget.

I used to think that I had to do everything myself.  Now I get great joy from helping others do things they thought they couldn’t.

I used to think of myself as a steamroller and I was proud of it.  Now I’m a behind-the-scenes conductor who is far more effective and much happier.

I used to be afraid to share my inner thoughts and feelings, but I’m getting better at that.

Image credit – Jai Kapoor

Innovation isn’t a thing in itself, and it’s not something to bolster for the sake of bolstering.

Innovation creates things (products, services, business models) that are novel, useful and successful.  It’s important to know which flavor to go after, but before that it’s imperative to formalize the business objective.  Like lean or Six Sigma, innovation is a business methodology whose sole intention is to deliver on the business objective.  The business objective is usually a revenue or profit goal, and success is defined by meeting the objective.  Successful is all about meeting the business objective and successful is all about execution.

There are a lot of things that must come together for an innovation to be successful. For an innovative product here are the questions to answer:  Can you make it, certify it, market it, sell it, distribute it, service it, reclaim it?  As it happens, these are the same questions to answer for any new product.  In that way, innovative products are not different.  But because innovation starts with novel, with innovative products the answers can be different.  For an innovative product there are more “no’s” and for each no there’s a reason that starts with a C: constraint, capacity, capability, competitor, cooperation, capital.  And the business objective cannot be achieved with closing the gaps.

After successful, there’s useful.   Like any work based on a solid marketing methodology, innovation must deliver usefulness to the customer.  Innovation or not, strong marketing is strong marketing and strong marketing defines who the customer is, how they’ll use the new service, and how they’ll benefit – the valuable customer outcome (VCO.)  But with an innovative service it’s more difficult to know who the customer is, how they’ll use the service and if they’ll pay for it.  (That’s the price of novelty.)  But in most other ways, an innovative service is no different than any other service.  Both are successful because they deliver usefulness customers, those customers pay money for the usefulness and the money surpasses the business objective.

Innovation is different because of novelty, but only in degree.  Continuous improvement projects have novelty.  Usually, it’s many small changes consistently applied that add up to meaningful results, for example waste reduction, improved throughput and product quality.  These projects have novelty, but the novelty is the sum of small steps, all of which stay close to known territory.

The next rung on the novelty ladder is discontinuous improvement which creates a large step change in goodness provided to the customer.  (Think 3X improvement.)  The high degree of novelty creates broader uncertainty.  Will the customer be able to realize the goodness?  Will the novelty be appealing to a set of yet-to-be-discovered customers?  Will they pay for it?  It is worth doing all that execution work?  Will it cannibalize other products?  The novelty is a strong divergence from the familiar and with it comes the upside of new customer goodness and the downside of the uncertainty.

The highest form of novelty is no-to-yes.  No other product on the planet could do it before, but the new innovative one can.   It has the potential to create new markets, but also has the potential to obsolete the business model.  The sales team doesn’t know how to sell it, the marketers don’t know how to market it and the factory doesn’t know how to make it.  There new technology is not as robust as it should be and the cost structure may never become viable.  There’s no way to predict how competitors will respond, there’s no telling if it will pass the regulatory requirements.  And to top it off, no one is sure who the customer is or if anyone will it.  But, if it all comes together, this innovation will be a game-changer.

Innovation is the same as all the other work, except there’s more novelty. And with that novelty comes more upside and more uncertainty.  With novelty, too much of a good thing isn’t wonderful.  Sufficient novelty must be ingested to meet the business objective, and a bit more for the long term to stay out in front.

Be clear about business objectives, deliver usefulness to customers and use novelty to make it happen.  And call it whatever you want.

Image credit – Agustin Rafael Reyes 

If you’re serious about your work, you’re too serious.  We’re all too bound up in this life-or-death, gotta-meet-the-deadline nonsense that does nothing but get in the way.

If you’re into following recipes, I guess it’s okay to be held accountable to measuring the ingredients accurately and mixing the cake batter with 110% effort.  When your business is serious about making more cakes than anyone else on the planet, it’s fine to take that seriously.  But if you’re into making recipes, serious doesn’t cut it.  Coming up with new recipes demands the freedom of putting together spices that have never been combined.  And if you’re too serious, you’ll never try that magical combination that no one else dared.

Serious is far different than fully committed and “all in.”  With fully committed, you bring everything you have, but you don’t limit yourself by being too serious.  When people are too serious they pucker up and do what they did last time.  With “all in” it’s just that – you put all your emotional chips on the line and you tell the dealer to “hit.”  If the cards turn in your favor you cash in in a big way.  If you bust, you go home, rejuvenate and come back in the morning with that same “all in” vigor you had yesterday and just as many chips.  When you’re too serious, you bet one chip at a time.  You don’t bet many chips, so you don’t lose many.  But you win fewer.

The opposite of serious is not reckless.  The opposite of serious is energetic, extravagant, encouraging, flexible, supportive and generous.  A culture of accountability is serious.  A culture of creativity is not.

I do not advocate behavior that is frivolous.  That’s bad business.  I do advocate behavior that is daring.  That’s good business.  Serious connotes measurable and quantifiable, and that’s why big business and best practices like serious.  But measurable and quantifiable aren’t things in themselves.  If they bring goodness with them, okay.  But there’s a strong undercurrent of measurable for measurable’s sake.  It’s like we’re not sure what to do, so we measure the heck out of everything.  Daring, on the other hand, requires trust is unmeasurable.  Never in the history of Six Sigma has there been a project done on daring and never has one of its control strategies relied on trust.  That’s because Six Sigma is serious business. Serious connotes stifling, limiting and non-trusting, and that’s just what we don’t need.

Let’s face it, Six Sigma and lean are out of gas.  So is tightening-the-screws management.  The low hanging fruit has been picked and Human Resources has outed all the mis-fits and malcontents.  There’s nothing left to cut and no outliers to eliminate.  It’s time to put serious back in its box.

I don’t know what they teach in MBA programs, but I hope it’s trust.  And I don’t know if there’s anything we can do with all our all-too-serious managers, but I hope we put them on a program to eliminate their strengths and build on their weaknesses.  And I hope we rehire the outliers we fired because they scared all the serious people with their energy, passion and heretical ideas.

When you’re doing the same thing every day, serious has a place.  When you’re trying to create the future, it doesn’t.  To create the future you’ve got to hire heretics and trust them.  Yes, it’s a scary proposition to try to create the future on the backs of rabble-rousers and rebels.  But it’s far scarier to try to create it with the leagues of all-too-serious managers that are running your business today.

Image credit — Alan

“Here – I made this.”  Those are courageous words.  When you make something no one has made and you show people you are saying to yourself – “I know my work will be judged, but that’s the price of putting myself out there.  I will show my work anyway.”  I think the fear of being judged is enemy number one of creativity, innovation, and living life on your own terms.  If I had ten dollars of courage in my pocket I’d spend it to dampen my fear of being judged.

No one has ever died from the fear of being judged, but right before you show your new work, share your inner feelings or show your true self, is sure feels like you’re going to be the exception.  The fear of being judged is powerful enough to generate self-limiting behavior and sometimes can completely debilitate.  It’s vector of unpleasantness is huge.

At a lower level, the fear of being judged is the fear someone will think of you differently than you want them to.  It’s a fear they’ll label you with a scarlet letter you don’t want to own.  This mismatch is the gradient that drives the fear.  If you reduce the gradient you reduce the fear and the self-censorship.

No one can label you without your consent, and if you don’t consent there is no gradient.  If you think the scarlet letter does not fit you, it doesn’t. No mismatch.  When someone tries to hand you a gift and instead of taking it from them you let it drop to the floor, it’s not your gift.  If you don’t accept their gift there is no gradient.  But there is a gradient because you think the scarlet letter may actually fit and the gift may actually be yours.  You create your fear because you think they may be right.

In the end it’s all about what you think about yourself.  If your behavior is skillful and you know it, you will not accept someone else’s judgment and there’s no fear-fueling gradient .  If your approach is purposefully thoughtful, you will not consent to labeling.  If you know your intentions are true, there can be no external mismatch because there is no internal mismatch.

No one can be 100% skillful, purposeful, thoughtful and intentional.  But directionally, behaving this way will reduce the gradient and the fear.  But the fear will never go away, and that’s why we need courage.  Be skillful and afraid and do it anyway.  Be thoughtful and scared and do what scares you.  Be true to your heart’s intention and just courageous as you need to be to wrestle your fears to the ground.

Image credit – Paul Townsend

If on the first day on your new job your stomach is all twisted up with anxiety and you’re second guessing yourself because you think you took a job that is too big for you, congratulations.  You got it right.  The right job is supposed to feel that way.  If on your first day you’re totally comfortable because you’ve done it all before and you know how it will go, you took the job for the money.   And that’s a terrible reason to take a job.

You got the job because someone who knew what it would take to get it done believed you were the right one to do just that.  This wasn’t charity.  There was something in it for them.  They needed the job done and they wanted a pro.  And they chose you.   The fact their stomach isn’t in knots says nothing about their stomach and everything about their belief in you.  And the knots in your stomach?  That ‘s likely a combination of immense desire to do a good job and an on-the-low-side belief in yourself.

If we’re not stretching we’re not learning, and if we’re not learning we’re not living.   So why the nerves?  Why the self doubt?  Why don’t we believe in ourselves?  When we look inside, we see ourselves in the moment  – in the now, as we are.  And sometimes when we look inside there are only re-run stories of our younger selves.  It’s difficult to see our future selves, to see our own growth trajectory from the inside.   It’s far easier to see a growth trajectory from the outside.  And that’s what the hiring team sees – our future selves – and that’s why they hire.

This growth-stretch, anxiety-doubt seesaw is not unique to new jobs.  It’s applicable right down the line – from temporary assignments, big projects and big tasks down to small tasks with tight deliverables.   If you haven’t done it before, it’s natural to question your capability.  But if you trust the person offering the job, it should be natural to trust their belief in you.

When you sit in your new chair for the first time and you feel queasy, that’s not a sign of incompetence it’s a sign of significance.   And it’s a sign you have an opportunity to make a difference.  Believe in the person that hired you, but more importantly, believe in yourself.  And go make a difference.

Image credit – Thomas Angermann

With Innovation, things aren’t always what they seem.  And the culprit for all this confusion is how she goes about her work.  Innovation starts with different, and that’s the source of all the turmoil she creates.

For the successful company, Innovation demands the company does things that are different from what made it successful.  Where the company wants to do more of the same (but done better), Innovation calls it as she sees it and dismisses the behavior as continuous improvement.  Innovation is a big fan of continuous improvement, but she’s a bit particular about the difference between doing things that are different and things that are the same.

The clashing of perspectives and the gnashing of teeth is not a bad thing, in fact it’s good.  If Innovation simply rolls over when doing the same is rationalized as doing differently, nothing changes and the recipe for success runs out of gas.  Said another way, company success is displaced by company failure.  When innovation creates conflict over sameness she’s doing the company favor.   Though it sometimes gives her a bad name, she’s willing to put up with the attack on her character.

The sacred business model is a mortal enemy of Innovation.  Those two have been getting after each other for a long time now, and, thankfully, Innovation is willing to stand tall against the sacred business model.  Innovation knows even the most sacred business models have a half-life, and she knows that she must actively dismantle them as everyone else in the company tries to keep them on life support long after they should have passed.  Innovation creates things that are different (novel), useful and successful to help the company through the sad process of letting the sacred business model die with dignity.  She’s willing to do the difficult work of bringing to life a younger more viral business model, knowing full well she’s creating controversy and turmoil at every turn.  Innovation knows the company needs help admitting the business model is tired and old, and she’s willing to do the hard work of putting it out to pasture.  She knows there’s a lot of misplaced attachment to the tired business model, but for the sake of the company, she’s willing to put it out of its misery.

For a long time now the company’s products have delivered the same old value in the same old way to the same old customers, and Innovation knows this.  And because she knows that’s not sustainable, she makes a stink by creating different and more profitable value to different and more valuable customers.  She uses different assumptions, different technologies and different value propositions so the company can see the same old value proposition as just that – old (and tired).  Yes, she knows she’s kicking company leaders in the shins when she creates more value than they can imagine, but she’s doing it for the right reasons.  Knowing full well people will talk about her behind her back, she’s willing to create the conflict needed to discredit old value proposition and adopt a new one.

Innovation is doing the company a favor when she creates strife, and the should company learn to see that strife not as disagreement and conflict for their own sake, rather as her willingness to do what it takes to help the company survive in an unknown future.  Innovation has been around a long time, and she knows the ropes.  Over the centuries she’s learned that the same old thing always runs out of steam. And she knows technologies and their business models are evolving faster than ever.  Thankfully, she’s willing to do the difficult work of creating new technologies to fuel the future, even as the status quo attacks her character.

Without Innovation’s disruptive personality there would be far less conflict and consternation, but there’d also be far less change, far less growth and far less company longevity.  Yes, innovation takes a strong hand and is sometimes too dismissive of what has been successful, but her intentions are good.  Yes, her delivery is sometimes too harsh, but she’s trying to make a point and trying to help the company survive.

Keep an eye out for the turmoil and conflict that Innovation creates, and when you see it fan the flames. And when hear the calls of distress of middle managers capsized by her wake of disruption, feel good that Innovation is alive and well doing the hard work to keep the company afloat.

The time to worry is not when Innovation is creating conflict and consternation at every turn; the time to worry is when the telltale signs of her powerful work are missing.

Things are no longer predictable, and it’s time to start behaving that way.

In the olden days (the early 2000s) the pace of change was slow enough that for most the next big thing was the same old thing, just twisted and massaged to look like the next big thing.  But that’s not the case today.  Today’s pace is exponential, and it’s time to behave that way.  The next big thing has yet to be imagined, but with unimaginable computing power, smart phones, sensors on everything and a couple billion new innovators joining the web, it should be available on Alibaba and Amazon a week from next Thursday.  And in three weeks, you’ll be able to buy a 3D printer for $199 and go into business making the next big thing out of your garage.  Or, you can grasp tightly onto your success and ride it into the ground.

To move things forward, the first thing to do is to blow up the strategic planning process and sweep the pieces into the trash bin of a bygone era.  And, the next thing to do is make sure the scythe of continuous improvement  is busy cutting waste out of the manufacturing process so it cannot be misapplied to the process of re-imagining the strategic planning process.  (Contrary to believe, fundamental problems of ineffectiveness cannot be solved with waste reduction.)

First, the process must be renamed.  I’m not sure what to call it, but I am sure it should not have “planning” in the name – the rate of change is too steep for planning.  “Strategic  adapting” is a better name, but the actual behavior is more akin to probe, sense, respond.   The logical question then – what to probe?

[First, for the risk minimization community, probing is not looking back at the problems of the past and mitigating risks that no longer apply.]

Probing is forward looking, and it’s most valuable to probe (purposefully investigate) fertile territory.  And the most fertile ground is defined by your success.  Here’s why.  Though the future cannot be predicted, what can be predicted is your most profitable business will attract the most attention from the billion, or so, new innovators looking to disrupt things.  They will probe your business model and take it apart piece-by-piece, so that’s exactly what you must do.  You must probe-sense-respond until you obsolete your best work.  If that’s uncomfortable, it should be.  What should be more uncomfortable is the certainty that your cash cow will be dismantled.   If someone will do it, it might as well be you that does it on your own terms.

Over the next year the most important work you can do is to create the new technology that will cause your most profitable business to collapse under its own weight.  It doesn’t matter what you call it – strategic planning, strategic adapting, securing the future profitability of the company – what matters is you do it.

Today’s biggest risk is our blindness to the immense risk of keeping things as they are.  Everything changes, everything’s impermanent – especially the things that create huge profits.  Your most profitable businesses are magnates to the iron filings of disruption.  And it’s best to behave that way.

Image credit – woodleywonderworks

Today’s commercial environment is fierce.  All companies have aggressive growth objectives that must be achieved at all costs.  But there’s a problem – within any industry, when the growth goals are summed across competitors, there are simply too few customers to support everyone’s growth goals.  Said another way, there are too many competitors trying to eat the same pie.  In most industries it’s fierce hand-to-hand combat for single-point market share gains, and it’s a zero sum game – my gain comes at your loss.   Companies surge against each other and bloody skirmishes break out over small slivers of the same pie.

The apex of this glorious battle is reached when companies no longer have points of differentiation and resort to competing on price.  This is akin to attrition warfare where heavy casualties are taken on both sides until the loser closes its doors and the winner emerges victorious and emaciated.  This race to the bottom can only end one way – badly for everyone.

Trench warfare is no way for a company to succeed, and it’s time for a better way.  Instead of competing head-to-head, it’s time to compete with no one.

To start, define the operating envelope (range of inputs and outputs) for all the products in the market of interest.  Once defined, this operating envelope is off limits and the new product must operate outside the established design space.  By definition, because the new product will operate with input conditions that no one else’s can and generate outputs no one else can, the product will compete with no one.

In a no-to-yes way, where everyone’s product says no, yours is reinvented to say yes.  You sell to customers no one else can; you sell into applications no one else can; you sell functions no one else can.  And in a wicked googly way, you say no to functions that no one else would dare.  You define the boundary and operate outside it like no one else can.

Competing against no one is a great place to be – it’s as good as trench warfare is bad – but no one goes there.  It’s straightforward to define the operating windows of products, and, once define it’s straightforward to get the engineers to design outside the window.  The hard part is the market/customer part.  For products that operate outside the conventional window, the sales figures are the lowest they can be (zero) and there are just as many customers (none).  This generates extreme stress within the organization.  The knee-jerk reaction is to assign the wrong root cause to the non-existent sales.  The mistake – “No one sells products like that today, so there’s no market there.”  The truth – “No one sells products like that today because no one on the planet makes a product like that today.”

Once that Gordian knot is unwound, it’s time for the marketing community to put their careers on the line.  It’s time to push the organization toward the scary abyss of what could be very large new market, a market where the only competition would be no one.  And this is the real hard part – balancing the risk of a non-existent market with the reward of a whole new market which you’d call your own.

If slugging it out with tenacious competitors is getting old, maybe it’s time to compete with no one.  It’s a different battle with different rules.  With the old slug-it-out war of attrition, there’s certainty in how things will go – it’s certain the herd will be thinned and it’s certain there’ll be heavy casualties on all fronts.  With new compete-with-no-one there’s uncertainty at every turn, and excitement. It’s a conflict governed by flexibility, adaptability, maneuverability and rapid learning.  Small teams work in a loosely coordinated way to test and probe through customer-technology learning loops using rough prototypes and good judgement.

It’s not practical to stop altogether with the traditional market share campaign – it pays the bills – but it is practical to make small bets on smart people who believe new markets are out there.  If you’re lucky enough to have folks willing to put their careers on the line, competing with no one is a great way to create new markets and secure growth for future generations.

Image credit – mae noelle

In Star Trek, the Prime Directive is the over-arching principle for The United Federation of Planets.  The intent of the Prime Directive is to let a sentient species live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution.  And the rules are pretty simple – do whatever you want as long as you don’t violate the Prime Directive.   Even if Star Fleet personnel know the end is near for the sentient species, they can do nothing to save it from ruin.

But what does it mean to “live in accordance with the normal cultural evolution?” To me it means “preserve the status quo.”  In other words, the Prime Directive says – don’t do anything to challenge or change the status quo.

Though today’s business environment isn’t Star Trek and none of us work for Star Fleet, there is a Prime Directive of sorts.  Today’s Prime Directive deals not with sentient species and their cultures but with companies and their business models, and its intent is to let a company live in accordance with the normal evolution of its business model.   And the rules are pretty simple – do whatever you want as long as you don’t violate the Prime Directive.  Even if company leaders know the end is near for the business model, they can do nothing to save it from ruin.

Business models, and their decrepit value propositions propping them up, don’t evolve.  They stay just as they are.  From inside the company the business model and value proposition are the very things that provide sustenance (profitability).  They are known and they are safe – far safer than something new – and employees defend them as diligently as Captain Kirk defends his Prime Directive.  With regard to business models, “to live in accordance with its natural evolution” is to preserve the status quo until it goes belly up. Today’s Prime Directive is the same as Star Trek’s – don’t do anything to challenge or change the status quo.

Innovation brings to life things that are novel, useful, and successful.  And because novel is the same as different, innovation demands complete violation of today’s Prime Directive.  For innovators to be successful, they must blow up the very things the company holds dear – the declining business model and its long-in-the-tooth value proposition.

The best way to help innovators do their work is to provide them phasers so they can shoot those in the way of progress, but even the most progressive HR departments don’t yet sanction phasers, even when set to “stun”.  The next best way is to educate the company on why innovation is important.  Company leaders must clearly articulate that business models have a finite life expectancy (measured in years, not decades) and that it’s the company’s obligation to disrupt and displace it.them.

The Prime Directive has a valuable place in business because it preserves what works, but it needs to be amended for innovation.  And until an amendment is signed into law, company leaders must sanction purposeful violation of the Prime Directive and look the other way when they hear the shrill ring a phaser emanating  from the labs.

Image credit – svenwerk